Geraint Thomas, the next british hope

[Saint Unix]

Re:

Contending? He did not have a single top 5 before getting his first podium at age 30.

He finished top 10 ten times, with his first at age 25. Also keep in mind he was a mountain domestique/luxury rider behind guys like Hamilton, Beloki and Basso for a long time.

As for Cuddles, he didn't switch from mountain biking to road cycling until he was 24. Thomas has been active on the road since his teens.

 

[ChewbaccaDefense]

Watching Bjarne Riis win the Tour again is a hard thing to accept...

 

[Saint Unix]

To all the cynics and the sceptics, I'm sorry you don't believe in these ridiculous weight loss + immense power increase miracles. This is a joke of a race.

 

[roundabout]

Re: Re:

Contending? He did not have a single top 5 before getting his first podium at age 30.

He said before winning his first Tour, not before turning 30.

Before that first podium, he had a long history of top 10 placings, the first one achieved at 25. Regardless of what you think of Sastre, he's very obviously not comparable to Thomas.

I think I know what I read.

Sastre became a genuine contender at age 30. Improving by quite a bit at around 30 (and from best GT finish of 6th to a win is quite a large improvement) does make him somewhat comparible to Thomas.

 

[roundabout]

Re: Re:

Contending? He did not have a single top 5 before getting his first podium at age 30.

He finished top 10 ten times, with his first at age 25. Also keep in mind he was a mountain domestique/luxury rider behind guys like Hamilton, Beloki and Basso for a long time.

As for Cuddles, he didn't switch from mountain biking to road cycling until he was 24. Thomas has been active on the road since his teens.

I know how often he finished in the top 10.

But IIRC at Once he was about 4th in the hierarchy in the 2001 Tour which shows how he was viewed inside the team and he barely scraped the top 10 in 2002 when Hamilton was doubling up and he did not have to ride a meter for him.

Come to think of it, I do not recall Sastre having to do a lot of mountain work in the Tour which would have hindered his GC position badly.

 

[Arnout]

I find it most suspicious that Thomas suddenly steps up when Froomes participation and form was in doubt (after contesting the Giro). An extra rider needed to be prepped. Thomas was decent in the mountains and is an allround talent but suddenly is superior for an entire Tour compared to any single day in previous Tours.

 

[hrotha]

Everybody not affected by Puerto automatically and inevitably took a few steps up the hierarchy. That is not hard to explain and it affected Sastre just as much as Evans, Menchov, Leipheimer, etc.

 

[Saint Unix]

Re: Re:

I know how often he finished in the top 10.

But IIRC at Once he was about 4th in the hierarchy in the 2001 Tour which shows how he was viewed inside the team and he barely scraped the top 10 in 2002 when Hamilton was doubling up and he did not have to ride a meter for him.

Come to think of it, I do not recall Sastre having to do a lot of mountain work in the Tour which would have hindered his GC position badly.

He was seen as a climber with a free role at best. His focus was breakaways. KOM jerseys and stage wins more than the GC, but he still did well because of his climbing prowess. Thomas had no climbing prowess until 2015. They can't be compared.

It wasn't until 2004 that Sastre actually put any sort of focus on improving his TT to try to do better in the GC. Sastre and Basso both trained specifically to improve their TT and also spent a bunch of time in wind tunnels to maximize their gain. Contrast that to Sky who don't give two craps about things like wind tunnels and still crush everything and everyone.

 

[hfer07]

So what's next for G? La vuelta to complete the a double? :lol:

 

[thehog]

Re:

So what's next for G? La vuelta to complete the a double? :lol:

What about the Froome vs G showdown at next years Tour?

 

[Huapango]

Re:

I find it most suspicious that Thomas suddenly steps up when Froomes participation and form was in doubt (after contesting the Giro). An extra rider needed to be prepped. Thomas was decent in the mountains and is an allround talent but suddenly is superior for an entire Tour compared to any single day in previous Tours.

Yes, and he's going to win the tour without having to try very hard. GT even eased up in the TT to make it appear almost believable. Just think how much Team Sky would win by if they actually had to suffer. I have to admit that Froome is doing much better with his acting this year. I imagine he's hired an acting coach.

 

[Ripper]

That was pretty funny stuff! G eased up, I guess to give Froome the possibility of a win, and was still 3rd. Or at least that's how it looked. LOL - I'm pretty sure if he was under pressure he would have won

 

[brownbobby]

Re: Re:

I find it most suspicious that Thomas suddenly steps up when Froomes participation and form was in doubt (after contesting the Giro). An extra rider needed to be prepped. Thomas was decent in the mountains and is an allround talent but suddenly is superior for an entire Tour compared to any single day in previous Tours.

Yes, and he's going to win the tour without having to try very hard. GT even eased up in the TT to make it appear almost believable. Just think how much Team Sky would win by if they actually had to suffer. I have to admit that Froome is doing much better with his acting this year. I imagine he's hired an acting coach.

Why does everything have to have suspicious meaning...Do you not think it more likely he simply eased up because he knew he’d won, only way he could lose was by crashing at that point....just like a racing car driver doesn’t take the final corners of the final lap on the ragged edge when he knows he can’t be caught?

 

[Escarabajo]

Deciding which of the three stooges has less talent of more talent or which one started at younger age or older age is a moot point to me. Who cares. I don't. What are we proving here? a coach that can say that within 5 years they will have a British champion at the Tour? seriously, how nuts is that. That is really ridiculous for a race of such endurance like the Tour. That right there is the whole explanation of the program they were going to build. So with Thomas they have proved that they can win almost with anybody. That they can fabricate Tour de France champions. And he is the third one and at 32 years of age. LOL. Do they play cards every two years to anoint the next Champion?

So bottom line is that Tomas is the third one to win the Tour in the factory of riders of Team Sky. Very sad, very sad indeed.

 

[Brullnux]

A victory for clean cycling

 

[Põhja Konn]

Alarcon or Santambrogio?

 

[Blanco]

Re:

I find it most suspicious that Thomas suddenly steps up when Froomes participation and form was in doubt (after contesting the Giro). An extra rider needed to be prepped. Thomas was decent in the mountains and is an allround talent but suddenly is superior for an entire Tour compared to any single day in previous Tours.

Yep, Thomas was on a full program, just like Wiggins 2012 and Froome in previous years. Froome on the other hand done 3 GT's in 6-7 months (South Africa, Giro, Tour), and on top of that Sky weren't even sure if he would be allowed to race. So Thomas was plan A right from the beginning, and Froome was a back-up option in case Thomas screws up. Sir Dave planned this scenario before the Tour started.

 

[dacooley]

So now that Thomas might ridiculously win the tour de France, some guy who likes Thomas (no motivation to lie right?) claims that some other guy at some unclear point of time said that Thomas would win the Tour de France one day.


The arguments for Sky are so weak its amazing. On the one hand reject as "no evidence" the idea that doping exists in cycling. On the other hand accept as gospel absolutely unverifiable heresay from dodgy sources like the above, as long as it backs the desired viewpoint.


I had a dream that Nostradamus said that a Welsh a Kenyan and a Brit would won day truimph in France. When can I get on ITV to retell this important story proving that Sky are clean?

some folks have an amazing capacity of looking at any sky-related things in two angles: sceptical and toxicly sceptical.

Cycling/ Sport. Not "Sky". And its a real sleight of hand to paint - those believing that TDF winners dope (after the sceptics were proved right time and time again) as "toxicly sceptical".

why should the tour be won by a rider with a perfect perfomance trajectory and credible development?

I never said it should.

why do gt winners have to be clean?

never said they should.

where does such an immense commitment to cleanliness transparency come from?

Well in Sky's case its probably their claims that they are the most transparent team in history that brings the mockery towards their lack of transparency.

why not just to reconcile with thomas winning the tour

Who said I wasn't reconciled?

Just because i point out flaws in fantastically weak arguments, doesn't mean any of the assumptions you made above are true.

Do you not agree that the argument of "some guy just said that at some point in the past this other guy told him Thomas would win the Tour" is weak? Its not even worth posting. I could say that some guy told me 10 years ago that Thomas would dope.

sure, as thomas winning the tour is reality so we have nothing left but reconсile with it. What I really don't understand is a nature of your caustic hostility to sky. at all times big teams had multiple advantages over small teams and teams with average budget. beyond doubt, a 45m financing allows sky to hire top-notch riders, benefit from using more advanced doping programs, training plans, recovery tecniques, logistics, etc, etc. that's always been the case in a sport of cycling, yes the difference between the most and second most well-off teams was smaller, but it fundamentaly doesn't change anything. why does exactly Sky cause unceasing whining about what a joke cycling is, as much rigged it is and so on? why is quintana or bardet kind of entitled to win the tour, while thomas is not? why a rider finishing at the very least in 2nd place in a gt for a 8th consecutive season gets still considered as the bigget fraud in the history of the sport?

i remember reading your posts from 2011-2012 when it came to schleck, evans, basso and contador and they really were incredibly reasonable and unbiased. sky obviously could shake your rational essence, The Hitch. seeimingly, something puts them at an unthinkable level in terms of hypocrisy and doping practises.

 

[DanielSong39]

I think dope is one thing and motor is another
There's also the WWE-like shenanigans associated with Sky
All credit to Thomas though, he performed and conducted himself admirably in this year's Tour

 

[Robert5091]

I think the sprinting at the end of gruelling mountain stages sticks out in my mind. Bring on the Vuelta!

 

[vedrafjord]

Wiggins' win in 2012 seems quaint in comparison now. He had an easy parcours with loads of TT km, Contador banned, Schleck injured, and the best climber in the race was on his own team. Thomas winning back-to-back Alpine stages against the best pure climbers in the world is on another level of suspicion. Speaking of suspicion, he was already scoring 6/10 on the UCI Index of Suspicion in 2010, when he came fifth in the prologue and tenth in the ITT but did nothing else of note and finished 67th on GC, two hours down on Contador. God knows what his score is these days.

 

[Cookster15]

Re:

Deciding which of the three stooges has less talent of more talent or which one started at younger age or older age is a moot point to me. Who cares. I don't. What are we proving here? a coach that can say that within 5 years they will have a British champion at the Tour? seriously, how nuts is that. That is really ridiculous for a race of such endurance like the Tour. That right there is the whole explanation of the program they were going to build. So with Thomas they have proved that they can win almost with anybody. That they can fabricate Tour de France champions. And he is the third one and at 32 years of age. LOL. Do they play cards every two years to anoint the next Champion?

So bottom line is that Tomas is the third one to win the Tour in the factory of riders of Team Sky. Very sad, very sad indeed.

Exactly my thoughts. The British delusion really is something where were all these people before 2012? Apparently they still believe the marginal gains nonsense as if other teams and riders don't have access to sports science. Are there polls about the popularity of Sky's victories outside of Britain?
The only thing legitimate is that thanks to having by far the biggest budget they can buy riders like Kwiatkowsk, Bernal, Poels and Castroviejo. In today's GC friendly TT result only Luke Rowe finished well down. Telling.

 

[MartinGT]

Everyone I speak to are absolutely delighted and are just saying that he raced using his brain by staying behind people like Dumo etc. I.e just reciting the sycophantic Ned Boulting, kirby et al

 

[el_giles]

G's agent is Pat Mcquaid's son.

 

[Scarponi]

What is the consensus on here, do you want it all eradicated or would you prefer if there was another team on the same level and it was just outright war for three weeks.